Deliberate Act
by Mendicantelle
Summary: Well, this whole city was dirty with stupidity. It would be his job to wash it clean with genius. (or, Oswald gets his ass handed to him. Again. And Jim comes to sort things out. Again.)
1. Chapter 1

It's not really about the pain, although heaven knows it would have been easier had that been the case. It's about the fear.

The rain falls into his wide, wild eyes, his gaping mouth (why is it always raining here? It's a wonder the whole city doesn't have trench foot) but it tastes good, even through the blood from his split lip.

It's his rain. This is his city. This rain might as well run in his veins instead of blood. He makes an involuntary gasping sound as the nearest goon swipes his feet out from under him with a scything kick, dropping him to the tarmac and scraping the knees out of his trousers.

He liked these trousers. They'd been expensive, and they'd made him look like the man he was supposed to be, the man who owned the city. Now they were dirty with refuse and as battered as his hide.

Well, this whole city was dirty with stupidity. It would be his job to wash it clean with genius. Even as the bat slams into his lower back, making his whole thin body lurch forward in a spasmodic, tetanic arch, he feels light-headed with validation.

It would be so much better if someone were here to witness this. Sometimes one needs that metaphorical (or not so metaphorical) shoulder pat.

The knife tears into him just below his collarbone and the air rushes out of him in a high-pitched scream.

He dimly hears the laughter, and the words _squeal piggy _and _snitch_ and _moron _being traded back and forth among his attackers, and even this only promotes a lurking, capering pleasure behind the physical pain

Because they're dismissing him with their fists, their feet, their blades: they're dismissing him in the language they'd use for one of their own. They're not using that word, that name, that -

- bird. The ultimate dismissal they save only for him, the freak, the gopher.

He's one of them. At last.

He would giggle with joy at this breakthrough, but he doesn't, because after all he is not quite that crazy and everything in his body does hurt a great deal. A _great deal. _

Instead the sound coming out of his mouth is whining, a wounded-animal keening which he really needs to remember how to make because it sounds absolutely _pathetic _and that is bound to come in handy at some point. He knows how scared he sounds, screw that, how scared he _is_, and that's perhaps his best and shiniest secret.

Because it's not about the pain. It's about the fear.

He used to think that being scared was crippling him. That his cowardice would hold him back, and he hated himself for it. But then one day, after getting his ass handed to him for the umpteenth time, he was given the secret, and his life changed.

It didn't matter if you were a coward. It didn't matter how scared you got, and heaven knows he's been scared so many times.

Because everybody, absolutely everybody, is scared. Maybe not all the time and maybe not always in that clenching, sick way that turns Oswald's gut, but everybody is scared. Even the tough guys. Even Fish Mooney. Even Falcone and Maroni. All scared, and weaker for it.

The glorious, shiny trick of it was to know that you were scared, and go through with it anyway. That was real strength, real bravery. That was much stronger than having big muscles or enough testosterone to drown a bull. A coward who's doing what he knows is the right thing even though he's scared half to death has untold advantages over a man who believes that he is brave right up until the moment he finds out he is not.

The stab wound is starting to burn like fire, the pain creeping down his nerves and describing curlicues around his skinny ribs. His jaw locks, his muscles shuddering with the strain as he tries to rise.

"Stay down, idiot."

The foot comes down in the middle of his spine. The voice gets closer as the man crouches, other foot coming down on Oswald's hand with a crunch of bone. Blood fills Oswald's mouth as he bites down on his lip.

"Ain't you got the sense you were born with?" asks the goon, in a clumsy facsimile of kindness. "Crazy mook."

If he's lucky, they won't break his jaw. A big hand grips his sodden, lank black hair, drags his head back, then slams it down into the sidewalk. He turns his head just enough to take the brunt on his cheekbone, feeling it split.

Luck is with him. He really, really wishes someone was here to see this. He feels triumphant.

"Stupid _penguin_," says one of the other foot soldiers, and all the joy, all the triumph is gone all in one cold rush. The rain goes back to being just rain. The city is a stranger. He's alone and he's just that thing, that toy of Mooney's. That _freak._

And Oswald goes crazy.

He pushes up from the ground so hard that he topples the man resting a foot on his back, and he goes for the man who called him - _that name _- by the throat. He's a biting, scratching horror, gangling limbs flailing, and the man who stabbed him is finding his knife is suddenly not where it should be and instead it's in Oswald's hand and there's a long, hung moment when he almost takes the man's head off -

The blow to the back of the head drops him in a sickening rush. Dizzy, soaked and almost senseless with frustration, he falls.

The words flung back and forth around him make very little sense and seem to be coming at him through a fog of cotton. Distant.

_little SHIT_

_get him if you_

_my goddamn knife, did you even_

The fog would have claimed him then, except for the gunshot. The sound is like the word of God, loud, demanding, final. The sounds of feet running as the goons flee the scene, and then more feet as a new man approaches.

Someone _was _watching after all. His shoes don't sound expensive, but they do sound well-used. That someone slips hands under Oswald's body, exhales a hiss of revulsion and horror as Oswald yelps, the invading fingers having pressed unawares into the slice of the knife wound.

The newcomer turns him over, so the rain is once more falling onto Oswald's pallid face like a benediction, sliding from the sharp angle of his nose and collecting in his shadowed eye sockets.

James Gordon's expression is caught between complete fury and deep concern. He can see the blood on his hands, knows whose it must be. His voice is raised to almost a coloratura in shock.

"_Jesus_, Oswald."

Oswald blinks up through the rain and feels that ebbing triumph begin to build once more. He reaches down into his memory, makes that keening wounded-animal sound, and then, only then, permits himself to relapse into semi-consciousness.

And Gordon, who often likes to believe that he is not afraid of anything, cradles the battered body of the man he should have killed and doesn't have the first idea what he should do.

It frightens him.


	2. Chapter 2

There weren't enough towels in the bathroom.

Gordon spent a whole ten seconds pacing in a state of fury after this discovery, considering and casting away all ideas like calling the motel reception and asking for more, because of course it hadn't looked bad enough already checking in here with Oswald _fucking_ Cobblepot lolling at his side looking like a teenage junkie with his sallow skin and battered face, scratch that, looking like a teenage junkie _hooker_, and didn't that just take the goddamn _cake_ because there wasn't any way Gordon was coming out of this looking like anything other than another bent, dirty cop and this was all. Going. To Hell.

From the grimy bedroom floor, Oswald whimpered, and Jim tore the shower curtain down in a fit of enraged practicality, grabbed the roll of toilet paper from over the john and went back to him.

No hospital. If nothing else could have convinced Jim that Cobblepot was seriously lacking some common sense, it was that. As a cop, he was used to seeing beat, and if anyone was beat, it was this man. When he'd picked him up from the gutter, he'd been stone cold out. Much easier to handle and surprisingly lightweight, despite the spill of his gangling limbs. But he'd woken up moments later just as Jim was about to sling him into the car, and had gone into a terrified, scrabbling tantrum, like a puppy about to get drowned in a bucket.

"What - what are you doing?!"

"Getting you to a hospital."

"No! No no no no -"

And damn him, if he hadn't started getting up, struggling to get out of the car, kicking at Gordon's shins with his big feet (and Christ knows that must have hurt Oswald more than it hurt him, what with the damage to his legs).

In another world, in another place this could have been funny: the cartoonish figure of Oswald in his ruined fancy suit, struggling with Jim's implacable grip, resisting being pushed inside the car by bracing his thin limbs, until Jim got fed up with it and gave him an entirely ungentle jab in the back of each of his knees. Oswald tumbled into the back seat with a howl as his ribs were jarred, and lay panting with stress, his eyes glinting in the darkness of the car.

"Just - just stay there," ordered Gordon, with a sinking feeling plucking at his stomach. He felt like he was willingly getting into a bed of poisonous snakes with his trousers down and his dick out, and he fully expected to get bitten on the ass at the very least. He slammed the car door shut before Oswald could lash out at him again. The man was a cowardly little weasel, but cowardly little weasels could fight like hell when cornered.

Oswald was silent, lying on his back across Jim's upholstery, and after a moment drew his legs up with a hiss of pain. The car's driver door opened, the car lurching under Jim's weight in the driver's seat.

"Try not to get blood on my car."

"O-of course, James. Anything y-you say." There was that tone again, the one Jim had heard before at Fish Mooney's. Cringing deference, but beneath it, steel. It was uniquely unpleasant to a cop's ears, because it was like a dog barking unseen behind a door. You never knew for sure how big an amount of trouble you were in or how long a leash it was on until you opened the door. The steel under Oswald's default sycophancy showed itself for a moment, flared briefly.

"But no hospital."

"No," Jim agreed. Things had clearly gone beyond the simplicity of hospital. This was a grade-A problem, and not even what Harvey could generally pass off as an SEFP. Somebody Else's Fucking Problem. Cobblepot was definitely Jim's problem. Wasn't it some kinda ancient rule that if you saved a man's life, that life belonged to you?

He'd never wanted to own anything less. And if he'd ever entertained any idea of hauling Cobblepot's ass back to his place, that idea was long gone.

The motel was cheap, dirty and thankfully anonymous. Jim was pretty sure he'd seen a drug deal going on in the lobby when he'd checked in, bundling the now limp and compliant Oswald along with him. Normally he'd've felt spurred to try and intervene, but now all he wanted to do was get this over with and get gone.

He spread out the shower curtain on the bed - it wasn't particularly clean anyway and better the blood got on something easily portable - and gestured with a flick of his head. "Get on."

It was frustrating to watch, but he had to give Cobblepot points for tenacity. He was clearly hurting in a dozen places and it took a lot out of him to get over that collection of hurts and up onto the motel bed.

Jim wasn't going to help him.

Not even a little bit.

Nope.

Cobblepot didn't react as Gordon put a hand under him and pushed him the last couple of inches until he lay flat on the sheet. Gordon didn't look him in the eye.

"Did it not occur to you that when I said not to come back, there might have been a careful, reasoned line of thought behind what I was saying to you?"

Dab, dab, dab. The blood on the face first, just to see how Oswald was going to cope with the discomfort, before moving onto the more problematic knife wound. Oswald lay frozen in place, his quivering hands drawn up to his chest, and flinched, twitched and blinked rapidly every time Jim's hand approached wielding the wadded paper.

"Jesus. I'm not going to hit you." Dab, dab, dab. "I mean I'm pissed at you, but I'm not gonna hit you."

"Thank you. You w-won't regret it. I mean I -"

"Shut up."

And damn if Oswald didn't flinch again, the dog cringing at the hand holding the food because it had learnt through long association that behind every small kindness lies a slap. It was so classically text-book abuse victim that Jim almost felt he should be taking notes. Instead, he tore off another handful of paper and started in on the knife wound without so much as a warning. Oswald whined and arched off the bed.

But he didn't run. No matter how much he cringed and shuddered and cried out. He wasn't moving away. If anything, by the time Jim was done cleaning him up, Oswald had shifted closer, huddling under the crude ministrations as if taking shelter.

The burgeoning sensation that Oswald trusted him was possibly one of the most unsettling things about this whole business. And what was worse was the suspicion that Oswald could _predict_ all this, predict the way it was making him feel. Predict _him. _

Oswald's eyes met his, then flicked away immediately. Nerves, perhaps. Perhaps not.

Christ, he needed to get out of here.

He finished up his first aid with brusque alacrity, trying to close himself off to Oswald's still creeping closer, close himself off to everything except the wounds and the rhythm of patching them. This was a job. He'd do the same with the cleanup of a particularly messy homicide. Get into the pattern, shut off the emotion until he had space and privacy to deal with it, though he couldn't even begin to think about just how much space and privacy he'd need for this whole mess. This was worse than homicide. This was personal.

He finished up and risked bringing himself back into focus. Oswald was a dark shape on the bed, huddled up so his knees brushed Gordon's legs. He radiated helpless, like the class dweeb who's just been rescued from a dumpster for the tenth time that week by his teacher. Probably with his books trashed and his lunch money long gone. Gordon had seen kids like Oswald all the time growing up. There was just something intrinsically pathetic and creepy about him, something which drove most people to victimise him, and the rest to -

- to what? _Mother _him? Protect him?

The hell with that. He was leaving right now. Cobblepot could go hang.

Jim Gordon got his hand on the exterior door handle before turning back with a bitten-off snarl of frustration.

Hadn't he been protecting Oswald Cobblepot the whole damn time? What was different?

_This was worse than homicide. This was personal. _

"Oswald?"

"Yes?"

Harmless, frightened: desperate to please. The dog behind the door was just that tiny, half-drowned puppy.

"When you're ready," Jim said, throwing in his hand, "come and see me. Take a cab to wherever you call home."

He never felt more like a clueless stooge than when he ripped a couple of twenties from his wallet and chucked them at the shape on the bed.


End file.
